Arlington wrote:What's the difference between a quiet zone (which I think of as a place that has no horns at all), and a grade crossing that has a wayside horn, and a grade crossing where the train sounds its horn?

I live near a crossing that was long grandfathered but when that waiver expired and the trains had the sound all horns it was unbearable, and my city immediately spent something like a million dollars to restore the peace.

All current Quiet Zone crossings that aren't grandfathered in have to have wayside horns. The wayside horn constantly blows a crossing sequence on loop the whole time the gates are down. Compare that to a normal crossing where a train just blows one crossing sequence.

In the case of Meriden the people there were getting annoyed with the constant sounding of the wayside horn and opted to just have them turned off.

In my opinion quiet zones crossings are useless and dangerous. The horn is on the train for a reason.

"It's intolerable at this point," Lareau said from his backyard overlooking railroad tracks. "Trains are going constantly. 24 hours a day."

Sounds like the poor guy bought a house and then they suddenly constructed a brand-new railroad next to it. I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who should know what they're getting when they decide to live next to tracks. And I write as one who lives a couple hundred feet from a very active commuter rail line.

This guy lives under the landing pattern for Bradley International. Parsons Road is 3 1/2 miles from the runway.

I have no sympathy for that guy whatsoever. Millions of people live less than 100 yards from an active railroad , and yet the area around only HIS house deserves a quiet spot? That is absurd. If you don't like train horns, don't live 50 feet from a railroad.

Arlington wrote:What's the difference between a quiet zone (which I think of as a place that has no horns at all), and a grade crossing that has a wayside horn, and a grade crossing where the train sounds its horn?

I live near a crossing that was long grandfathered but when that waiver expired and the trains had the sound all horns it was unbearable, and my city immediately spent something like a million dollars to restore the peace.

All current Quiet Zone crossings that aren't grandfathered in have to have wayside horns. The wayside horn constantly blows a crossing sequence on loop the whole time the gates are down. Compare that to a normal crossing where a train just blows one crossing sequence.

In the case of Meriden the people there were getting annoyed with the constant sounding of the wayside horn and opted to just have them turned off.

In my opinion quiet zones crossings are useless and dangerous. The horn is on the train for a reason.

A slight correction - the wayside horn is a non-quiet zone way for a municipality to get some reduction in the sound, since the horn is aimed at the roadway, and therefore isn't required to be as loud. A quiet zone is exactly that - no horns at all, but in exchange, the crossing has to have 4-quadrant gates and barricades to prevent traffic from using the wrong side of the road to get around the gates (and maybe some other things, too).